How is Google getting millions of dollars worth of free labor?
July 11th, 2008All search engines face a problem:
How do you label all the images on the web with descriptive terms so your image-search-engine produces highly relevant results? Do you hire people to go through one by one and describe them? Of course not!
Google set up a simple game to swindle bored internet surfers into doing it for free (I’m amazed that people actually participate). This is how Google describes it:
You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will:
- View the same set of images.
- Provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see.
- Receive points when your label matches your partner’s label. The number of points will depend on how specific your label is.
- See more images until time runs out.
After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.
Next time you find the image you are looking for make sure to think of that sad little internet drones who made it possible–for free!
